Posted on 05/31/2007 5:56:50 PM PDT by WesternCulture
Search engine giant Google has slammed Sweden's proposed wiretapping legislation as illiberal and incompatible with Western democracy.
Speaking on a visit to Sweden on Tuesday, the company's global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer, warned that Google would rule out making any major investments in Sweden should the controversial bill become law.
"We have contacted Swedish authorities to give our view of the proposal and we have made it clear that we will never place any servers inside Sweden's borders if the proposal goes through," Fleischer told Internet World.
The proposal, which would allow the National Defence Radio Establishment (Försvarets Radioanstalt - FRA) to monitor e-mail and telephone traffic coming in and out of the country, has met with fierce criticism from several quarters within Sweden. But Google had remained relatively silent on the issue, until now.
"We simply cannot compromise our users' integrity by allowing Swedish authorities access to data that may not even concern Swedish activity," said Fleischer.
Google's privacy chief went as far as to suggest that Sweden was in danger of embarking on a path usually reserved for dictatorial regimes.
"The proposal stems from a tradition begun by Saudi Arabia and China and simply has no place in a Western democracy," he said.
Fleischer added that Google has submitted its criticism of the proposed legislation to the Department of Justice.
"Sometimes Google needs to take a clear stance and my impression is that everybody has listened very intently to what we have had to say," said Fleischer.
The Swedish government has previously defended the proposal on the grounds that it will help in the fight against terrorism and international organized crime.
But the opposition, government agencies and a host of other organizations have accused the proposed legislation of being unconstitutional and a threat to individual freedoms.
Disagreements between the Moderate and Social Democrat parties on some of the finer points of the legislation have made it unlikely that the bill will be pushed through parliament in the near future.
Instead, the opposition parties are expected to make use of a constitutional regulation enabling them to postpone a parliamentary ruling until next year, meaning that the bill would come into law in 2009 at the earliest.
Already in 1970, Ericsson and Televerket (the Swedish part of what today is Telia Sonera, the leading Telephone company in Sweden and Finland) started working on what in 1981 became the first fully-automatic cellular phone system in the world.
Today, Stockholm is home to a concentration of cutting edge IT industry that could only be rivaled by Silicon Valley.
I’m convinced Swedish agencies like the above mentioned FRA (Sweden’s national authority for signals intelligence) could contribute to making Sweden a very unfriendly environment for terrorist and other enemies of mankind.
The West will not defend freedom by providing safe havens and recruiting grounds for terrorists and criminals.
Now we Know why Rosie “O’Dough-NUTZ!” like Google so well.
Google has outgrown its pants from a marvelous search engine to a conniving global power wannabe. So you want to call Sweden a dictatorship? Look in the mirror.
Threaten to ban them. Then they will refrain from criticism to benefit the greater good. It worked for the Chicoms.
Isn’t Google the same company that bent over backwards to make China happy?
China said "Jump", Google asked "How high?" on the way up.
How rich is that? Coming from the same company that sold out those same values of Western democracy by censoring web content in China.
Hmmmmm, so then they will bow to any demands Sweden makes then? ROTFLMAO
If Google considers Sweden a dictatorship, then what do they call Venezuela? The DPRK?
His conviction was later overturned, but the law is still on the books. Disrespecting homosexuals is punishable by up to four years in prison.
Sweden sucks.
There is no reason to be so self-depricating - Google always takes a clear stance. Only “sometimes” thing here is what that stance exactly is - “sometimes” it’s arrogance and blackmail (when dealing with a democracy), “sometimes” it’s groveling (when dealing with commies, islamists, and the like).
A few years ago Google eagerly cooperated with the communist Chinese government to have a Chinese version of Google that would pass government censorship. I think Google also provided some information to help the Chinese government track down dissidents. I am quite sure the argument was that the Chinese have their own way of doing things and we must respect that, and it would be cultural imperialism to force Western ideas of freedom on them, etc. Now a free country like Sweden wants more safeguards against terrorists and child exploiters and Google says Sweden is a dictatorship.
But it’s okay to cave into China? What thought-police.
Later read/pingout....Google is evil.
“Google censors itself for China” (Article by BBC):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4645596.stm
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